New York Times launches bite-size video news

The New York Times launched a new video product on Monday that offers a minute-take long take on the news curated by Times staff. Dubbed the “New York Times Minute,” the inaugural episode features stories about Iranian nuke negotiations, a development dispute and hermaphrodite sea slugs. Here’s a screenshot that shows the intro:

New installments are published at 6am, noon, and 6pm, with the video clips appearing on the NYTimes.com homepage and on a dedicated blog site. In a statement, Executive Editor Jill Abramson described the videos as “a natural extension of our journalism that allows our viewers a quick and useful way to keep up with the news.”

The move comes as the New York Times has been planning a variety of other new products, including a food news feature and a lower-priced product aimed at younger readers.

For publishers like the Times, video holds promise because it is growing fast and can command high ad dollars. On the other hand, as Gawker Media’s Nick Denton pointed out at a media conference last week, video can be expensive to produce and most clips are only watched by a handful of people. For this reason, Denton suggested that non-TV outlets, which have little expertise in video, are best off pursuing a curation or aggregation strategy.